Would the real Rene Bourque please stand up with HabsBack to video

That definitely wasn’t the case in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final when Bourque had a hat-trick in the Canadiens’ 7-4 win over the New York Rangers at the Bell Centre to avoid elimination. Bourque had four shots on goal, four hits and 17 penalty minutes while logging 12:21 of ice time.

He was the whole package.

The hat-trick gave Bourque eight goals in 16 playoff games after scoring nine times in 63 regular-season games while being made a healthy scratch nine times.

“You know what?” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said during a press conference the day after Bourque’s three-goal performance. “In the end of the regular season, we saw Rene engaged in the game a lot more, moving his feet, being physical, going hard to the net. He’s doing a lot of good things.

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“You can’t expect a player to score three goals every night or even score every game. But even when he doesn’t score, he’s playing solid hockey. He’s getting involved physically. And last night, for me, it was leadership. It was a huge game for us. He came up big, and that’s good not only for him, but for us. I really appreciate his effort last night.”

It was a lack of effort on some nights that resulted in Bourque never getting selected at the NHL draft after playing at the University of Wisconsin, where he posted 16-20-36 totals in 42 games during his final season there in 2003-04 before signing as a free agent with the Chicago Blackhawks.

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“We talked about (his inconsistency) a little bit in his days with us and I’m not quite sure if maybe he had hit that consistent button enough in his college days,” Mike Eaves, who coached Bourque at Wisconsin, told me before this year’s NHL playoffs started. “He would show flashes.”

But Eaves added: “The one thing that Rene could always do in college is that he was pretty consistent in his ability to play big in big games. He loved to score goals. Maybe that consistency button wasn’t there enough. But he likes to play in the big games.

“This is a funny little fact,” Eaves added with a laugh, “but he’s the best open-net goal-scorer I’ve ever seen. You know, when the other team pulls their goalie … he never missed. Honestly, he would have four or five goals a year that were empty-net goals. You know, some guys they get all nervous … but he would put that thing in all the time, which is kind of a funny inside story.”

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Eaves added that Bourque’s personality might have something to do with his inconsistency on the ice.

“He’s kind of a laid-back guy,” said Eaves, who has been the Wisconsin coach since 2002. “If you’re going to get to know Rene, I think you got to spend a lot of time with him. You and I both know people in that realm where it just takes time because they’re quiet people and he’s one of those guys. We’re talking about both sides of the same coin. One one side, when the game’s on the line he tends to show up, but on the other side he’s not always there game in and game out.”

Eaves added that he was pretty sure Bourque would be able to play in the NHL after he left university.

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“I thought because of his size and his shot and his ability to score big goals that he might have a chance,” Eaves said. “When he went to the next level he had an opportunity to show what he can do and he’s got that stuff within him … we see those real special glimpses of what he can do. I think he’s learned to become a good pro in terms of his work ethic, he’s gotten better I think in the way he takes care of his body, he’s certainly got better in the way he trains in the summer. I think he’s learned to become a good pro.

“The pace is so much faster at the level they play at now (in the NHL),” Eaves added. “So maybe the surprise is that he can play at that pace. He has that next gear in his gearbox, he’s got that fifth gear that he can put his car into. There are a lot of real good college hockey players that leave college and they can’t make it at the next level because they can’t play at the next pace. They can’t keep up or they can’t think at that pace. And Rene was able to do those two things to get to the next level.”

I asked Eaves if he had a memorable story about Bourque – who is a Metis – from his days at Wisconsin, and he recalled Bourque’s mother, Barbara, giving him and his wife a book about the history of the Lac La Biche, Alta., area that they are from and their First Nation tribe.

“We still have it to this day,” Eaves said of the book. “It was one of those things that was really from the heart from his family and we still have that in our home today.”

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